An everyday tale of family and political life with a dollop of Formula One and various random thoughts on the side.

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

My letter asking my MP to vote for equal(ish) marriage

If you're a regular reader of this blog, there's a tiny chance you might have formed the impression that I'm totally in favour of allowing couples who love each other to get married. End of.

The Bill on offer in the House of Commons today doesn't quite deliver that, but it's a huge step in the right direction.

I have written to my MP, Graeme Morrice, to ask him to support the Bill. Here's what I said. I'll let you know what he says. To be honest, I'd be very surprised if he was voting against, but he still needs to be told how I feel.

Dear Graeme

Just a quick note to say that I hope you will support the bill to allow
couples of the same sex to get married. This affects so many of my friends. I
don’t see why their love is any different to the love I share with my husband
and it is so unfair that the state doesn’t recognise it in the same way.

There are things that need to be amended about this bill – I, personally,
would prefer there not to be a specific exclusion for the Church of England and
Church of Wales, and there are real issues re the marriages of transgender
people. I hope that these can be dealt with as it progresses through
Parliament.

I often wonder how it would feel if there were some arbitrary law saying
that you couldn’t marry someone more than 10 years older than you. That would
have stopped me from spending 25 happy years of marriage with my lovely husband.
Our failure to allow couples of the same sex to marry is quite disgraceful and
must end.

To those who suggest that redefining marriage is something that we
shouldn’t be doing, it’s only 150 years since a married woman had the right to
have her own property. In fact, only 20 years ago, judges were saying that men
couldn’t rape their wives, something which has thankfully been changed. Marriage
has changed, a great deal, and for the better. This bill enhances marriage and I
hope that you will vote for it enthusiastically today.

Best wishes

Caron

Update: Well, that was fast. It took Graeme Morrice just 79 minutes to confirm that he will be supporting the Bill tonight. Excellent stuff. I'm not particularly surprised, but the other side fill MPs' inboxes with their views, so it's important to get some balance in there.